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American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To delay, hinder, or prevent by taking precautionary measures beforehand. See Synonyms at prevent.
2. v. To deal with or think of beforehand; anticipate.
3. v. To prevent or hinder normal sales in (a market) by buying up merchandise, discouraging persons from bringing their goods to market, or encouraging an increase in prices in goods already on sale.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To buy up, as merchandise, before it has reached the market or before market-hours, and hence by taking advantage of others in any way, with the intention of selling again at an unduly increased price.
2. In law, to obstruct or stop up, as away; intercept on the road.
3. To diminish; deprive by something preceding.
4. To take or bring forth in advance of something or somebody else; hinder by preoccupation or prevention; anticipate; prevent or counteract beforehand.
5. Synonyms To monopolize, engross, preoccupy.
6. n. A footboard.
7. n. The lookout man who walks before the operator and his victim when a garrote-robbery is to be committed. , verb See garrote

Wiktionary

1. n. An ambush; plot; an interception; waylaying; rescue.
2. n. Something situated or placed in front.
3. v. transitive To prevent, delay or hinder something by taking precautionary or anticipatory measures; to avert.
4. v. transitive To preclude or bar from happening, render impossible.
5. v. archaic To purchase the complete supply of a good, particularly foodstuffs, in order to charge a monopoly price.
6. v. To anticipate, to act foreseeingly.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To take beforehand, or in advance; to anticipate.
2. v. To take possession of, in advance of some one or something else, to the exclusion or detriment of the latter; to get ahead of; to preoccupy; also, to exclude, hinder, or prevent, by prior occupation, or by measures taken in advance.
3. v. rare To deprive; -- with of.
4. v. (Eng. Law) To obstruct or stop up, as a way; to stop the passage of on highway; to intercept on the road, as goods on the way to market.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. keep from happening or arising; make impossible
2. v. act in advance of; deal with ahead of time